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Italian Economy

Hey Guys,

Still playing my first game as Italy VIP0.3 and it's 1874. I've been reading how my education level should be maxed out and my tariffs should be as low as possible with my tax rates at 33% or lower except in emergencies.

However, with a 33% tax rate, there is no way I can maintain max education even with max tariffs and everything else set to zero. Have I just not spent enough time investing in promoting my POPs and building even more factories? Or is the fact that I had to spend the first years uniting Italy and battling Austria the reason I can't do this yet?

I know I'm not giving you all specifics of my economy. I've built factories to keep all of my clerks and craftsmen employed. I have just started really spending (and going into debt) to promote laborers and farmers to clerks and craftsmen. Should I be doing that even more to improve the lot of my POPs?

Still playing my first game as Italy VIP0.3 and it's 1874. I've been reading how my education level should be maxed out and my tariffs should be as low as possible with my tax rates at 33% or lower except in emergencies.

However, with a 33% tax rate, there is no way I can maintain max education even with max tariffs and everything else set to zero. Have I just not spent enough time investing in promoting my POPs and building even more factories? Or is the fact that I had to spend the first years uniting Italy and battling Austria the reason I can't do this yet?

I know I'm not giving you all specifics of my economy. I've built factories to keep all of my clerks and craftsmen employed. I have just started really spending (and going into debt) to promote laborers and farmers to clerks and craftsmen. Should I be doing that even more to improve the lot of my POPs?

Factories are not profitable at the start of the game, and in the middle they're not especially better than RGOs.

My priorities for factories are simply to avoid buying from the world market wherever possible - even if that means a factory producing chemicals that claims to be making a loss.

Necessary factories are...

Canned food, steel, chemicals and small arms. Those enable you to build up your draft over time, not only in case you need to use it, but to give you a better military score.

It's desirable to have other factories such as furniture, paper, regular clothes, in order to promote to clerks. And of course the fabric and lumber mills required to support them.

If you run an interventionist government - my personal favourite is interventionism and laisses faire - then you have the ability to expand factories. By expanding factories where you need more production of a resource, and closing and deleting factories where you feel you want less production, you should have much more control over what you produce. Although sometimes you'll just simply have to wait on your capitalists coming up with a steel factory so you can expand it, for example. I rarely turn down the events which build factories, my advice is always to pick a state where you don't have a capitalist.

Some importing will simply need to be done. Dye, cotton, tropical wood. Perhaps some iron and coal if you heavily industrialise.

But a huge mistake is to industrialise to early or too much. You may see your income increase greatly as you increase the amount of factories and staff them. But there probably is no link between them. As the game progresses RGOs and factories become greatly more productive. Don't mistake your RGOs getting better as factories being more profitable.

The absolute key thing in Victoria is railroads though. Always get railroad technology, and either build them by hand or ensure that your capitalists are doing the job.

Shouldn't ever have low/middle income tax at less than 50%. You should only have low rich tax and low tariffs if you're L-F AND you're trying to grow your economy. I'd recommend maxing tariffs for most of the game, that should solve your financial problems.
Who said you should have low tariffs? That's very bad advice, there are very few countries that could survive on 33% tax and low tarriffs.

Halk - Some of the things you are talking about I thought only happen in Revolutions, no? I thought capis only build their own factories in Revolutions and that I will have to do it myself in Vicky. Good food for thought on the rest of it. I'll keep it all in mind. I've got just about one of every factory I can build. My big question is whether I should promote my farmers/laborers to craftsmen/clerks. Would I be getting better tax revenue from them. RE: Railroads, I only built them down the center of Italy to move my troops faster. Should I be sucking it up and putting them everywhere? Do I need to upgrade my railroads past experimental when I can also? That seems like a huge expense.

Joe - Everything I read said that 50%+ tax will raise either cons. or milt. (can't remember which). And that lower tariffs will reduce milt. Is that not the case? That's why I was trying to do that. I have a lot of revolts.

You have alot of revolts because you've just formed and most of your POPs have been under AI control for the past 30 years, so will have high MIL.
Anything above 50% will raise MIL yeah but even then only a little, and keeping it at 50 will do nothing to raise it. I only ever have mine set to 50 or 0, 0 for rich POPs if I want factories/railroads, and 0 for other groups if I'm disparately trying to lower MIL.
Tariffs will raise CON *if* your POPs have Free Trade as an issue, but since CON is only important if you're authoritarian it's bit of a non-issue. Basically having max tariffs does nothing to directly raise MIL. If you were a very poor country (think 1 or 2 provice African minor) it might mean your POPs couldn't afford stuff from the World Market and raise MIL slightly, but that shouldn't bother you.
Oh and build railroads everywhere, always. Your priority should be Sicily, since those high-level sulphur RGOs will bring you mad profits. And the AI likes to build factories in there so make sure they're all down the mines instead. IIRC you can get several hundred pounds a day just from those mines.

I've got a problem with POP conversion: playing Northern Italy (Sardinia-Piedmont) I convert a 10k Farmers POP into Clerks but here it comes: from a 5/5 industry one Clerk and one Craftsmen POP go away and from another one i go from 5 to 4/5, meaning that my clerks and some craftsmen are disappearing, probably returning to farming positions? Why does it happen? I've got 50% taxes on all and max tariffs, while my internal policy sliders are all on 50% more or less.

I've got a problem with POP conversion: playing Northern Italy (Sardinia-Piedmont) I convert a 10k Farmers POP into Clerks but here it comes: from a 5/5 industry one Clerk and one Craftsmen POP go away and from another one i go from 5 to 4/5, meaning that my clerks and some craftsmen are disappearing, probably returning to farming positions? Why does it happen? I've got 50% taxes on all and max tariffs, while my internal policy sliders are all on 50% more or less.

Are the POPs that disappear small ones? The may be merging with the one you just created if so. It's a bit weird that the Craftsmen would disappear though.

"A friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a body." - Rich Hall

"If there's one thing that really pisses me off, I call that a good day." - David Mitchell

"Life is like a box of chocolates, in the end you're always stuck with the Marzipan."

I've got a problem with POP conversion: playing Northern Italy (Sardinia-Piedmont) I convert a 10k Farmers POP into Clerks but here it comes: from a 5/5 industry one Clerk and one Craftsmen POP go away and from another one i go from 5 to 4/5, meaning that my clerks and some craftsmen are disappearing, probably returning to farming positions? Why does it happen? I've got 50% taxes on all and max tariffs, while my internal policy sliders are all on 50% more or less.

It could be that they're immigrating away from your country. I forget what the fix is, but I think that might be the problem.